Monday, January 30, 2006

Lest we forget

If you haven't read this, you should. I will even go so far as to say you owe it to yourself. Just a taste of what you have in store:

Our Right to Security
Al Qaeda, not the FBI, is the greater threat to America.

BY DEBRA BURLINGAME
Monday, January 30, 2006 12:01 a.m.
(
Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.)

One of the most excruciating images of the September 11 attacks is the sight of a man who was trapped in one of the World Trade Center towers. Stripped of his suit jacket and tie and hanging on to what appears to be his office curtains, he is seen trying to lower himself outside a window to the floor immediately below. Frantically kicking his legs in an effort to find a purchase, he loses his grip, and falls.

That horrific scene and thousands more were the images that awakened a sleeping nation on that long, brutal morning. Instead of overwhelming fear or paralyzing self-doubt, the attacks were met with defiance, unity and a sense of moral purpose. Following the heroic example of ordinary citizens who put their fellow human beings and the public good ahead of themselves, the country's leaders cast aside politics and personal ambition and enacted the USA Patriot Act just 45 days later.

A mere four-and-a-half years after victims were forced to choose between being burned alive and jumping from 90 stories, it is frankly shocking that there is anyone in Washington who would politicize the Patriot Act. It is an insult to those who died to tell the American people that the organization posing the greatest threat to their liberty is not al Qaeda but the FBI. Hearing any member of Congress actually crow about "killing" or "playing chicken" with this critical legislation is as disturbing today as it would have been when Ground Zero was still smoldering. Today we know in far greater detail what not having it cost us.


Read it all and reflect on what is happening in the political arena today.

This is another of the articles that should be on your reading list while you ask the question about who you want to be leaders of our country in the future.

And for an excellent legal view of what is happening or not happening with the NSA question and whether or not it is legal or Constitutional, it is difficult to find a better overview than this by John Hinderaker at Powerline.